World Cups tend to mark the end of a cycle. England and Wales will go into next year's Six Nations without two players who came to define them this century.

Jonny Wilkinson made a typically dignified exit from international rugby this week, nine days after Shane Williams had made his 87th and final appearance for Wales, scoring a try with his final touch of the ball in a Test match against Australia at the Millennium Stadium.

Wales lost, but Williams made a fitting exit. The pity for Wilkinson was that his final appearance for England came in the World Cup quarter-final against France at Eden Park last October, a wretched campaign ending limply. There will be no Twickenham finale for him with Toulon not in this season's Heineken Cup, unless his club free him to play for the Barbarians against England at the end of May next year.

Wilkinson played in 91 Tests for England, an astonishing number given that he missed three Six Nations campaigns and autumn Test series from 2004 because of various injuries. At one point it looked as if his final contribution in a white shirt was to be the extra-time drop goal that landed the World Cup for England in 2003, but Wilkinson reacted to every setback with equanimity, knocked back but never knocked down.

Like Williams, Wilkinson was not big for a modern international rugby player. If Williams made his natural ability make up for his lack of a physical presence, elusiveness, quick footwork and an ability to see where space would open up, Wilkinson's success was based on hard work. He may have lacked the innate talent of some of his rivals for the outside-half jersey, but like Neil Jenkins before him with Wales, he more than made up for that with his work ethic, professionalism and burning desire to succeed.

The end of his international career was anticlimactic, not just because his goal-kicking was uncharacteristically unreliable but because of the way some members of the England squad conducted themselves off the field and used the anonymity of post-tournament reviews to blame others for their failings on it.

Even Wilkinson, in his autobiography that was published last month, expressed his distaste for some of the antics, and in his resignation statement he showed what he thought of those who had used the review procedure to criticise the coaching team in poison pen letters by praising every member of it: we all succeed together, we all fail together.

Wilkinson's first World Cup campaign was in 1999. England fell at the quarter-final stage then, beaten by South Africa. Had the Rugby Football Union indulged then in an exhaustive review procedure, would Clive Woodward have survived as coach? Would all the players have been unanimous and unqualified in their acclaim of him and his coaches? Judging by the back page of one newspaper after the tournament, which called for Woodward to be sacked, probably not.

Wilkinson did not play the blame game. Even during the World Cup, when his goal-kicking suffered because he felt the match balls lacked consistency, he did not offer excuses, even if his autobiography was to reveal his frustration. While others whined and dined, Wilkinson got on with it.

He was not a player who redefined the role of an outside-half. If he did tackle with relish, one of the reasons for his catalogue of injuries, that path had been followed by Neil Jenkins, who also paid for it physically, finishing his career with a couple of dodgy shoulders. Wilkinson was an organiser, an effective executor of gameplans: everything he did, whether kicking for goal or touch, taking restarts, running, passing or putting up high kicks, was carefully calibrated.

He did not have the cold calculation of other outside-halves in history and he was not at his most dangerous when a game broke up. His accuracy marked him out and that was a consequence of his application. He was, and is, driven to the point of obsession and compulsion. In terms of temperament, he is the same player who made his England debut as an 18-year old in 1998. Fame did not change him and he is a player the England squad should look to in the coming years.

Williams took a different route to the top. There was a point in 2002 when his Test career looked over before it had really begun. It was the era of Jonah Lomu and there was a player almost half the All Black's height and weight trying to make an impact. He was told to go away and bulk up, losing some of his speed and picking up injuries.

Williams decided to do it his way, and if his Wales career took off by accident in the group match against New Zealand in the 2003 World Cup – he had been chosen in the squad as a third scrum-half and was given his first outing on the trip on the wing with Wales having already qualified for the last eight – his display that day came to define him, making bigger men look flat-footed as he danced away from them.

Wilkinson made his mark in terms of points and dropped a remarkable 36 goals in his international career. Williams dealt in tries, 58 of them for Wales and a couple for the Lions to take him to within nine of the all-time record. He could have gone on, like Wilkinson, trying to defy time and tide, chasing 100 caps and a landmark, but he wanted to decide when he left the stage and not be pointed towards the exit.

The decision may have been made for Wilkinson with the RFU saying that from the new year players based overseas would only be selected by England under exceptional circumstances, but what coach, never mind what happened in New Zealand, would deny himself a player who made opponents feel uncomfortable?

Wilkinson and Williams, in their different ways, had remarkable international careers and they are not lost to the game as they continue their club careers. Wilkinson has found a second home in Toulon, where he is respected and loved in equal measure. He is very much part of the present at the ambitious club where, in his final years with England, you felt that his past counted for more.

That feeling is reinforced in his autobiography where he told of his discomfort at moving out of an environment he felt comfortable in to one where he questioned whether he fitted in. Williams was the spirit of Wales from 2003, the year Wilkinson reached the top of the world, and their achievements will not quickly be forgotten.

Lapasset stays as IRB chairman

The election of the International Rugby Board's chairman this week became lost among the tributes paid to Jonny Wilkinson, but the victory by Bernard Lapasset should be significant for the international game.

The Frenchman beat England's Bill Beaumont by 14 votes to 12 at a meeting held in a Los Angeles airport hotel that was not quite as stormy as the one in Auckland two months before but was still loaded with acrimony.

The closeness of the vote should not disguise the wide constituency enjoyed by Lapasset. Eight of Beaumont's votes came from the four home unions and another two were supplied by New Zealand. Canada and the Oceania region were his only backers from outside the tier one nations and his support was essentially from English-speaking countries.

Lapasset received two votes each from Australia, South Africa and France. Italy, Japan and Argentina took his tally to nine and he received the support of five of the six regions, north America, south America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

There was no questioning his mandate. He had campaigned on a promise of changing the way the IRB ran the game and the election of the executive committee the same day was a start. For the first time, the tier two nations, through Japan, gained representation, along with the regions, through the North American union.

The home unions were the victims. The Welsh Rugby Union chairman, David Pickering, finished at the bottom of the poll, just above Scotland's Bill Nolan. It was a significant move with the Board having for so long been ruled by the few.

One delegate said that the issue for the IRB moving forward was to reform or die. Some unions are clinging on to the past: Italy and Argentina are members of the major international tournaments in their hemispheres, but they only have one vote each on the Board's council, compared to the two enjoyed by their rivals.

Having the tier two nations and the regions represented on the executive committee will lead to greater inclusion. That happened because Lapasset's block of 14 votes held strong in the election: New Zealand had justified backing Beaumont on the grounds that he was the reform candidate, but that was nothing more than smoke.

New Zealand split from their Sanzar colleagues Australia and South Africa, just as the Six Nations was divided with France and Italy backing Lapasset. Given the way the game has tended to divide between north and south when big decisions are made, it made a difference.

The next showdown will come in Dublin at the end of February when the distribution of money generated by World Cups will be discussed. Australia and New Zealand are as one in insisting that they will not be able to afford to take part in the 2015 tournament if the losses they incur every year the competition is held continue.

Only two major unions, Argentina and Scotland, do not suffer financially in a World Cup year even though the distributed income from the tournament is 51% for the tier one nations and 49% for the rest. There will also be the question of whether Wales will be allowed to play any of their group matches in 2015 at the Millennium Stadium.

It is a wretched notion. Imagine if they were drawn in the same pool as England and a quarter-final contender such as Samoa or Argentina, who would end up playing two hosts. It should be a non-starter, but with the RFU needing to raise £80m in ticket sales for the IRB, arms are being twisted.

Beaumont's future on the IRB is uncertain. He was elected to the executive committee after Lapasset's supporters agreed that both New Zealand and England should be represented on the body, but they expected the RFU's other representative on the IRB, John Spencer, to be nominated.

Beaumont will stay on the executive if the RFU names him as Martyn Thomas's replacement on the Board, but there is a feeling at Twickenham that the place should be taken by the Union's new chief executive, Ian Ritchie, following a principle established by the Sanzar unions and followed by Wales.

Ritchie has the experience in sport, having become the Football League's first independent non-executive director in 2004, but he may want to spend time initially concentrating on the changes he wants to make at Twickenham.